Taken by Storm (Give & Take) - By Kelli Maine Page 0,40
chuckled through a yawn. “There, I said it, but it’s a lie. I do have it with me.”
She kicked one of her flip-flops across the room. “Why the hell would you take it with you?”
“Why the hell did you leave this morning before coming to get it from me?”
“I didn’t! I’m standing in my bedroom at my dad’s. You’re the one who left.”
“Enzo said—” MJ groaned. “Never mind. The fact is you can’t be trusted to not change your mind. You don’t know what you want, Maddie.”
If he were there, she’d strangle the life out of him. She gritted her teeth, seething. “I told you my decision. I need the ring to give back.”
“Well, I need you to tell me why you left me before I give it back. You need something and so do I, sounds like we have a deal.”
Maddie sank onto her bed and let her eyes fall shut. “No deal. Just send the ring back here, MJ.”
“Come get it, Mads.” He laughed and hung up.
Maddie tossed her phone to the end of her bed. “I hate you,” she mumbled, knowing it was far from the truth.
Fifteen
A knock came on MJ’s door as he set his phone down, still laughing, imagining how pissed Maddie was.
Slipping off the bed, he stretched, yawned and rubbed his eyes on his way to answer it. Rachael stood on the other side. “Ready to find Heidi and Roger?” she asked, looking refreshed and relaxed in shorts and black bikini top.
He wasn’t ready to face his aunt and uncle and meet his cousins, but being stuck in a little island resort with them didn’t leave him much of a choice. “Sure.”
MJ pulled his GSU baseball cap on backward and met Rachael in the hall. “They’re out by the pool,” she said, jogging down the stairs in front of him. “Holly and Sam are like fish. You should’ve seen them with Merrick the other day. He was throwing them up in the air and…” Her face fell. “Sorry.”
“For what? My father playing around with little kids when he wasn’t around for me when I was their age? He thought I was dead, Rachael. I can’t blame him for not being there for me.”
She tucked her hair behind her ear and nodded.
They were quiet until they stepped outside the lounge doors onto the patio. “Why isn’t there anyone here?” he asked.
Rachael twisted her fingers. “It was a private opening weekend. My mom and aunt and best friend, Shannon, were here, but they left while I was gone. Heidi, Roger and the kids are here for the week though.”
They headed down a path to the right of the patio, this one made of large flagstones with big trees clustered on their left. Maddie could never resist climbing the biggest trees in the woods by the lake when they were younger.
It was a miracle she didn’t kill him back then; she was always such a tomboy. He followed her around and did everything she did. Jumping out of trees, swimming all the way across the lake, racing their fathers’ golf carts. She’d been his entire world.
On some level, she still was. That damn ring up in his room buried in his jeans pocket was killing him, serving as a constant reminder that she didn’t belong to him. If she came to get it from him… MJ couldn’t even think about hearing those words fall from her lips, the expression on her face as she looked him in the eye and told him why she left him over a year ago.
No. She wouldn’t. She’d never tell him.
“Right through here,” Rachael said, stepping into a walkway covered by a palm frond tiki roof. The walkway surrounded an open courtyard with a huge pool in the center. A swim-up bar sat on the far side. Two little kids ran side-by-side and jumped over the water, grabbing their knees and splashing down in dual cannonballs.
MJ’s aunt was stretched out on a lounge chair in the sun with a book open in front of her face. Roger sat on a stool in the shade of the swim-up bar talking to a dark-haired guy behind it.
Hell with this, MJ thought. He ripped off his shirt and tossed it on the ground with his hat and cell phone, kicked off his flip-flops and took off running for the pool. Just because he wasn’t ten years old anymore didn’t mean he couldn’t do cannonballs with the best of them. Plus, what better way to make